by Worth, Dan
‘You stupid bloody fool, Rekkid Cor,’ he said to no-one in particular. ‘Why couldn’t you have been like most academics and spent the rest of your life in your study with a pile of old books? What are you doing all the way out here?’
The ship’s cat avatar padded into the room, its tail held high. Rekkid looked up at its approach.
‘Maybe I’m just curious,’ said Rekkid. ‘The humans have a saying about cats and curiosity and what happens to them as a result.’
The looming form of Steelscale entered behind the cat, his saurian body reeking of K’Soth hormonal secretions.
‘And what have you been up to?’ said Rekkid. ‘Dare I ask?’
‘You may not,’ said Steelscale. ‘Suffice to say I have cut my concubines loose of their obligations to me. I offered them the chance of staying on this world, if they wish. They chose to stay with me instead.’
‘Seems like everybody on this ship has a death wish of some kind,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Where’s Katherine? Is she in her room?’
‘No, I couldn’t find her. I thought that you might have seen her.’
‘She’s in the arboretum,’ said the ship. ‘Come, I’ll take you to her.’
They found Katherine sitting under a broad, leafy tree, gazing into the middle distance at the artificial landscape. Rekkid sat down beside her and crossed his long legs.
‘Are you frightened, Rekkid?’ said Katherine.
‘Frightened? I’m fucking terrified, why do you ask?’
‘Then it’s not just me.’
‘No it’s not, trust me. Me, Steelscale though he won’t admit it, Mentith, everyone. Everyone is frightened. If they aren’t frightened, then they’re idiots or, like our artificial friend here,’ he said, reaching out to scratch behind the cat’s ears, ‘are incapable of feeling fear.’
‘I’m not sure that makes me feel any better, actually,’ said Katherine. ‘If the rest of you weren’t so scared, I’d think it was just me terrified that we’re about to die.’
‘We can always stay behind.’
‘No. No we have to finish this. Promise, though, Rekkid,’ she said, turning round to look him straight in the eye. ‘Promise me, that if it comes to a choice between death and being enslaved by those things that you’d know what to do, because I’d do the same for you.’
‘Of course,’ he replied, nodding furiously. ‘I won’t let that happen.’
There was silence, whilst each of them became lost in their own dark thoughts.
‘So what are you going to do, when all of this is over?’ said Katherine, trying to lighten the mood.
‘Me? Spend about a month getting dangerously drunk, I think, and then vow to never leave the safety of my faculty again, assuming it isn’t a smoking crater already. You?’ Rekkid replied.
‘I think I’d just like to see Earth again, see my family. It’s been so long since I’ve been back... but on the other hand, I might just join you in the business of getting drunk. Steelscale, what about you?’
‘I can’t go home. If I do, my own people will execute me as a traitor,’ said Steelscale, sadly. ‘I don’t know... maybe there are other exiles like me scattered across space. Maybe if I settled in the Commonwealth and tried to do something to build bridges between our species... perhaps it’s a vain hope.’
‘It’s a start,’ said Rekkid. ‘It’s a damn sight more productive than what I have in mind.’
The ship’s cat avatar spoke now, its golden eyes regarding them with a piercing gaze.
‘I am sorry to interrupt,’ said the ship. ‘But I think that you should return to the bridge. The Defence Collective has agreed to allow us passage to the Shaper home-world. It’s time.’
Chapter 52
‘You fucking bastard. You told us that we’d lost those things in the forest!’ yelled Anna. ‘Now you’re telling me that they’ll be coming here?’
‘It’s a foregone conclusion,’ said Steven. ‘You think that you can shake off the Shapers that easily? They watched where we went, it’s the only explanation. I had to get back here. I had to use the secure comm. unit to warn the Commonwealth about that goddamn armada that’s just appeared over our heads.’
‘Oh you did, did you? Might as well have raised a fucking flag whilst you were at it, they’ll have detected the signal, even if they couldn’t decipher it. And what about us?’ Anna spat back.
‘This is bigger than any of us. I made a calculated decision. Billions of lives could be at stake here.’
‘Yeah, well what about our lives?’ snarled Isaacs. ‘Did you ever think of that?’
‘Yes, I did, actually. I fucking did. Do you think it was easy? If I didn’t give a shit about either of you, I’d have left you back in that nightclub along with your little lady-friend, since you two seemed to be getting on so well.’
‘Don’t you ever...’ Isaacs began, pointing a shaking finger at Steven. ‘Anita was a good kid, she didn’t fucking deserve... those things...’ In his anger and grief he ran out of words to adequately express how he felt. He turned suddenly away and lowered the hand he had unconsciously clenched into a fist ready to strike Steven.
‘Anita?’ said Maria, eyes widening in horror. ‘Oh no... not her...’
‘I put three rounds in her. Two in her skull. I think it was enough to kill that thing inside her,’ said Anna, grim faced.
‘Good,’ said Maria. ‘I’d have done the same.’
They were gathered inside one of the rooms carved into the bedrock inside the Hidden Hand’s concealed base. The room was bare, the rock walls unadorned. There was no furniture besides a collection of desks pushed together into an oblong in the centre of the room surrounded by a mismatched set of chairs.
‘Fucking great... now what? We sit here and wait for us all to end up like that?’ Isaacs spat.
‘I’ve been told to await further orders,’ Steven replied, flatly.
‘Oh you have, have you? Well in case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t take any fucking orders. We’re leaving before those things arrive.’
‘What, you think you’re going to get off this planet?’ said Steven. ‘Jesus, Cal. You’re a damn fine pilot, but I don’t fancy your chances against a sky full of Shaper vessels.’
‘Well can’t we call in the Uncaring Cosmos, get them to de-cloak in low orbit and pick us up, then make a run for it?’
‘We haven’t heard from the Uncaring Cosmos since you arrived,’ said Maria, leaning back in her chair with her arms folded. ‘We have to assume that she was destroyed covering your asses when you swooped in here. Ain’t nobody riding to our rescue, unless you fancy taking that ship of yours up against hundreds of capital ships up there’
‘Shit,’ Isaacs breathed and shook his head.
Commander Baldwin, former XO of the Lincoln, had been silent until now, watching them bicker and noting to herself how unlike the professionals that she was used to working with the Hidden Hand were. Even after spending so much time with them in this godforsaken rat hole she was amazed any of them were still alive at all.
‘If I might ask, Agent Harris: did you find Admiral Haines?’
‘Yes, yes I did. I believe that he’s being held in the cells beneath the Assembly House in Bolivar City.’
‘And his status?’
‘Unknown. He’s alive, but whether he’s still one of us or not, I can’t say.’
‘And are you planning to go back for him?’
‘Those were my original orders. Now? I just don’t know if it’s possible.’
There were lights, voices. Haines felt himself being roughly lifted to his feet and carried as though he weighed nothing at all. He couldn’t focus. The lights and figures and walls swam in his vision. They’d done something to him. Drugged him. Was it something in his last meal? Or had they come in the night and injected him with something? It didn’t matter.
His feet were barely touching the ground. He felt like he was flying, or walking in low gravity, taking giant slow steps along a corridor of l
ight that seemed to stretch and twist if he tried to look at it, the echoes of the voices distorting also. There was the sound of doors opening. A lift maybe? He squinted and thought that he could see the control panel on the wall to his left. Yes, they were going upwards. It wasn’t just the curious feeling in his belly – that could be the drugs – the panel showed a series of arrows floating up.
The lift stopped and he was dragged out, and then down large corridors that echoed with space and were full of bright light. There was a black and white chequerboard pattern on the floor, a floor that gleamed in the bright lights and echoed to the footsteps of the men that carried him (if they could truly still be considered to be men, after all, they were little more than puppets of meat, bone and sinew).
They turned a corner into what felt like a larger space with a high ceiling and ornate decoration that seemed to melt and shift before him beneath swaying light sources hung high in the air. Still handcuffed, he was pushed down into a chair.
Isaacs had retreated to the familiar surroundings of his ship. He was checking her over, making her ready for a possible sudden departure. The Hidden Hand technical crews had done a decent job of giving his vessel the once over - repairing minor damage, tightening loose bolts, adjusting instruments and so on. Even so, he needed to inspect everything once more just to be sure, and besides, it gave him a little time to himself. He wondered what the odds were against making an escape run from Orinoco, and just how many of the people cowering down here in the tunnels he’d be able to fit inside the Profit Margin’s hull. Drawing lots would be an ugly business if it came to that, not that he could guarantee that he’d be able to make it out of the system in one piece. Maria was right, there was a sky full of hostile ships up there, and a moon now crawling with the enemy down here. Scouts had already spotted gunships and small Shaper craft combing the jungle. They had managed to somehow shake them off in their flight from the city, but the Shapers seemed to have a good idea about the general area in which they were hiding. It would only be a matter of time before they came here to winkle the surviving members of the Hidden Hand out of their hiding place.
He was lying flat on his back, half way underneath the main cockpit console when a pair of booted feet appeared beside his head. They belonged to Anna.
‘Cal, you need to see this,’ she said. He looked up and saw that was holding a datapad.
‘See what?’
‘It’s Haines. They’re trying him for war crimes right now. It’s about to be streamed live across all networks.’
Back in one of the communal areas, they gathered around Anna’s datapad and watched the broadcast unfold. Judging by the opulent surroundings, the trial was taking place inside the Assembly House. Admiral Cox was presiding as both judge and prosecutor whilst rows of uniformed figures sat on the benches, as motionless and regimented as automatons. A bedraggled figure sat slumped in the dock. It was Haines.
Commander Baldwin gasped in shock as she caught sight of her commanding officer. Haines looked considerably worse for wear. Normally clean shaven and impeccably turned out, his grey hair and scruffy beard had grown long from weeks of neglect and he was clad in the remains of his naval uniform, now ripped and scuffed and heavily soiled. His remaining eye appeared unfocused and he seemed to be unaware of his surroundings. That eye peered out of a face that was mottled with bruises from repeated beatings. He also looked to have lost a considerable amount of weight, his features gaunt and sunken. As the list of charges against him was read out, he didn’t react.
‘...crimes against humanity, deliberate targeting of civilian populations, torture and execution of POWs, leading an unprovoked attack against a sovereign world, namely Orinoco, acts of terrorism including conspiracy to plant explosives and carry out kidnapping and murder on the world of Orinoco...’ Cox stood behind the dais at the head of the room and continued to read off the list of supposed crimes that Haines had committed.
‘This is nothing more than a show trial,’ said Baldwin in disgust. ‘The Admiral deserves better than this. He’s a goddamn hero.’
‘What did you expect, due legal process?’ Isaacs replied.
‘Why are they doing this? Why not just kill him, or enslave him with one of their creatures?’
‘Propaganda, I imagine,’ said Steven. ‘They’re trying to tarnish the reputation of a highly decorated hero of the Commonwealth. Not only that; they want the people of the Commonwealth to see their hero broken before they kill him. They want them to see what happens to those who stand against the Shapers.’
‘Is this footage genuine?’ said Maria.
‘Impossible to tell,’ Steven replied. ‘If it is, then Haines is still alive, and if he really is as sedated as he appears, then that suggests that he’s still one of us, not one of them.’
‘Then we have to get him out of there,’ said Baldwin. ‘He’d do the same for us. Admiral Haines never left any of his own behind. We owe him that much.’
Was he in a court room of some kind? There was a figure up at one end of the room, up on some kind of platform. It looked like he was reading off something. Haines struggled to see him, struggled to hear what the figure was saying, but it was like trying to see and hear things underwater. He concentrated and made the figure swim into focus. It was wearing a dress naval uniform and had dark brown skin. A thought struck Haines through the fog in his brain. He strained for clarity of thought and vision, leaning forward to see better.
‘Cox, is that you?’ he heard himself slur.
‘Yes, Admiral Haines. It is Admiral Cox standing before you. You are charged with the aforementioned crimes. I ask you again, how do you plead?’ The words took a while for Haines to digest.
‘Admiral Cox. You always were an asshole,’ he answered. ‘I see that’s one part of your personality that the Shapers couldn’t destroy.’
‘Admiral Haines, if you do not provide an appropriate answer, a guilty plea will be entered.’
‘Go and fuck yourself,’ Haines replied, and slumped back in his chair.
The feed suddenly stopped, the image frozen for second or two, before an error message overlaid itself.
‘Damn it,’ said Anna, fiddling with the datapad. ‘Looks like we lost the connection.’
‘Maybe Haines didn’t play along with their little charade,’ said Isaacs.
The feed suddenly resumed after a few moments, just in time for them to hear Cox read out the sentencing.
Death. Haines felt strong arms lift him out of the chair and drag him from the room. Well, that was hardly a surprise. About time, he was tired of waiting for them to get on with it. He guessed that the whole trial thing was a little piece of theatre that they were going to broadcast to the rest of humanity. The great Admiral Haines laid low at last. Well fuck them, they hadn’t broken him, and that was why he knew in his heart that they could never truly win. As long as there were humans left free somewhere in the galaxy, they would keep fighting on, keeping the species struggling on against the encroaching darkness. As they hauled him back to his cell, Haines felt nothing but a perverse sense of victory.
Steven’s orders arrived soon after via the secure comm. Hunched over the device in one of the cabins of the Profit Margin, he looked them over on its small screen, responded briefly and received a further acknowledgment a few moments later. He sat back on the narrow bunk for a moment, contemplating what he was about to do and then went to find the others. He found them lounging in the same communal area as before, transfixed by the rolling news coverage of Haines’s trial. He pointed at the screen and said simply: ‘I’m off to go get the old guy. Who’s with me?’
‘Me,’ said Commander Baldwin, immediately. ‘Those of us who served with Haines, I think you can count us all in.’
‘Are you fucking out of your mind!?’ said Isaacs. ‘You saw the hordes of those things landing around the city. It’s a suicide mission, and you know it.’
‘This is a strictly volunteer mission only. My orders state that I cannot compel any
of you to accompany me. Captain Isaacs may well be right - this may be a one way trip.’
‘How the hell are you going to get in there and come back out alive?’ said Maria. ‘Those things ain’t just going to let you.’
‘The Navy has a task force headed this way to attack the Shaper vessel in orbit above us that’s powering that portal and hopefully destroy it, stopping any more enemy ships from arriving. I don’t have an ETA, but I will receive a go signal via the secure comm. once they enter the system. That will be my key to move in, when the Shapers are distracted. My orders are to cause as much disruption as possible in Bolivar City, strike behind the enemy lines and give them something else to think about besides the capital ships bearing down on them. By the sound of things, it seems like the Navy has some new intel., possibly scanning technology or recon, that indicates that the Assembly House has a Shaper node somewhere within it. We are to destroy it, and if possible, rescue Haines from the same location before we do.’
‘So, go on Steven, I can tell that you must have some sort of viable plan of how you’re going to do this, or else you wouldn’t be standing here asking us to come along,’ said Anna. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘I’ve been going over the inventory of this place. You now have two ships capable of atmospheric and space flight after you cannibalised all those parts and wreckage, the Profit Margin, and a cargo freighter, the Unholy Matrimony as well as an AG flitter. On top of that, you have the plentiful supplies of weapons and ammo that we brought with us, and it seems, two highly illegal anti-matter tipped missiles.’
‘Yeah about those...’ said Maria, uneasily.
‘Look, right now I don’t care where they came from. These things are just what I need.’
‘Yeah, those things are pretty effective against the Shapers,’ said Isaacs. ‘We used individual containment spheres against the ship that rammed its way into Port Royal’s docking bay, hurt it real bad, but if you set one of those entire warheads off it’s going to wipe Bolivar City off the map. It’s got what, a ten megatonne yield?’